


loose change

by hilarions



Series: alleyways and backlanes [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, D.Gray-man
Genre: AtLA AU, Gen, Omashu (Avatar), water tribe avatar who cant bend water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 23:31:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14580024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hilarions/pseuds/hilarions
Summary: In case you were wondering how Team Avatar was formed...





	loose change

**Author's Note:**

> so i drew the pic and thought that would be the end of it but we all know i am weaker than that.

The easiest thing about being born of the Water Tribe and not being able to bend water was that he could pretend, quite easily, that he couldn’t bend at all. 

The hardest thing about being born of the Water Tribe and not being able to bend water was that he had no explanation for the scars he’d burned up his own arm years ago when Cross had first started teaching him how to harness fire. 

There’d been no more sloppy mistakes after that. 

_ The best fire benders, _ Cross had told him, forcing his red-blistered-burned arm under a stream of too-cold water which hurt just as much as the fire had,  _ have one scar. Only one,  _ he repeated emphatically, grip unrelenting on Allen’s seared wrist, stern determination toeing the edge of condescension when he looked down at him, at his tears and bitterly shuddering breaths.  _ No more,  _ he’d said, and tapped a finger on the harsh ceramic of the mask he wore - one that covered all of half his face -  _ and no less. Do you understand? _

Allen had locked his jaw and nodded, pain shuddering through breaths forced from his nose. Cross’s manner of tutelage had never been kind, had rarely left room for empathy or consolation, but his job had never been to keep Allen happy. He understood, and he never burned again. And that was what Cross had taught him. 

Head resting on his hand, elbow on his knee, Allen sat cross-legged at the edge of the stone-hewn canal and watched the water stream by below him. “You old fool,” he muttered to the distorted reflections of a high, desert sun. Omashu was a bustle of life in rock-and-sand desolation, and there was meant to be someone waiting for him. Cross had promised to arrange someone to teach him. “How am I meant to master earth without a mentor?” he muttered, flicking a stone off the edge of the escarpment to be swept away by the current. “Who’s meant to teach me water when the tribes have been slaughtered?” he breathed on a frustrated sigh, knocking another in. “How am I even meant to  _ find  _ the Air Nomads?”

“Those are some interesting thoughts to muse,” a lazily intrigued voice considered, and Allen’s head snapped around to catch a man leaning against the brickwork of a nearby warehouse, slinking in the shade for respite from the burning sun. “Not the safest thing to be muttering about,” he added, nonchalant, a small smile curling at his dark lips, eyes creased in mocking amusement beneath the edge of his hood. “Anyone might make assumptions.”

Allen forced himself to swallow past a dry throat and asked, fingers dug against the sun-warm stones beneath him, “Are you making assumptions?”

“Who,” he asked, glancing around the otherwise deserted street with a laugh, “me? No, no. I know better than to mistake a skinny Water Tribe tourist for the  _ Avatar,  _ of all things.”

Allen’s lips twitched, nervous and tense, and he rolled to his feet. “What makes you think I’m Water Tribe?” he demanded, baring the green and gold of his Earth Kingdom garbs. 

His smile folded deep and sarcastic, and he said, “Where have you ever seen a boy as white as you further south than the Arctic Circle?”

Allen hesitated, hands curled to fists at his side, feet set ready for defence, and he breathed the tension out long and slow, all the way from deep in his gut. Loosened his fingers, closed his stance. He swallowed again, tongue darted out across dry lips. “You know Cross?” he asked, cautious of saying more.

“Never been there,” he shrugged simply, and turned as though to go on his way. Whatever he’d come for, he’d gotten it.

“Wait!” Allen demanded, dashing to catch his elbow. “Where are you going?”

The man glanced down at him from the corner of his eye, all gold and piercing. “Wherever I please,” he said, mild. “If it’s an earth bender you want, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”

Again he made as though to leave, and Allen tugged insistently at his arm, wrenching him back. “I can’t let you leave,” he said, stubborn and severe, glaring up beneath his cowl. Dark Earth Nation skin, gold Air Nomad eyes. “You know who I am.”

“You’re just some kid,” he said, twisting his arm easily out of Allen’s bruising grip, “who wants to see the world before it burns.”

He turned a third time, and all Allen could do was watch him go with arms hanging defeated by his side. What cause had he to trust a stranger with a secret that could get him killed. But what else was he to do? Intimidate him? Burn him? Keep his frustrations to himself in the future, certainly. Omashu was safe from the Fire Nation, but that was no promise that made them a friend of the Avatar. It had been Allen’s predecessor who had started the war, after all. 

He’d only made it as far as the Earth Kingdom, hadn’t even met with the agent Cross had seemingly failed to contact before his arrest. He’d only made it this far, and chances were he was to be ousted as a survivor of the Water Tribe genocide and something much worse by someone who simply happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. 

All he had to say otherwise was his firebending, and that was as likely to get him put to death in Omashu as being the Avatar would anywhere else. 

Slowly, he looked up. Burning sapphire sky crowded in with the slanted rooftops of the city. Hardly easy terrain, but he’d run the roofs of Capital Island a hundred times if he’d done it once, and this would have nothing on the curved pagodas and sharp embellishments of the Fire Nation’s favoured architecture. 

With a deep breath he crouched low, eyes on the eaves, and sprang up to catch the gutter edge of the hot tiles. The searing sting of sun-beat rooftops was all but nothing, and he swung himself up with ease and crept to the peak of the slant to peer down into the street below, scanning for the gold-embroidered red of the man’s hood. 

He’d already made it some way down the alley, heading for the busier streets of the convoluted markets - stalls and shops and salesmen massing through a whole quadrant of one of the largest cities in the largest nation. It was easy to get lost, even without the intention of losing someone. 

Keeping low, Allen slid down the other side of the slant and lept from one roof to the next, scrambled over the rise and lept again, eyes constantly flickering back to the red hood weaving through the milling stream of a steadily-thickening crowd. It would do no good to drop down on him again. Allen couldn’t intimidate him - that much was clear - and he couldn’t burn him. Wouldn’t. 

Wherever he was going - to tell an authority that he’d found the Avatar, or to simply forget all about  _ the kid who wanted to see the world,  _ Allen would watch him. Then, at least, he’d know if he ought to forget Omashu outright and move forward by his own means. Cross had already done all he could. There would be no use in throwing away his life waiting for him to do more. 

The rooftops he climbed over were white-bright and stung his eyes. Whether he shaded them from above or below he was squinting at the exposure, blinking over and over for some respite, afterimages overlaying each other. At a junction into one of the busiest streets yet, Allen found he’d lost sight of the man he was chasing. Peering over the gables into the massing metropolis, the only flash of red he saw was in woven rugs and glazed ceramics. No hood in sight. Too distracted by his blindness to see, it seemed. He could imagine just the way Cross’s lip would curl, had he been there. 

On a heavy sigh, Allen dug the heels of his palms against his aching eyes and shook his head. He should leave Omashu. He might never find Cross’s agent, if he’d even managed to contact them before the domestic forces imprisoned him for treason. With the added threat of being hunted down and executed for the crimes of a past life, it would be entirely worth fleeing the city. 

“You old bastard,” he breathed, defeated and entirely unsure if he was cursing Avatar Neah or Admiral Cross. 

“Are you seriously crying?”

“What?” Allen demanded, his aching eyes snapping open, hand planted on the hot slant of the roof tiles while he scrambled into some fervent semblance of a low defensive crouch. And there, standing on the edge of the rooftop, hands raised in bemused supplication, was the red-and-gold hood he’d been chasing. “What are you doing?” Allen asked, squinting against the brightness, not relaxing a breath.

“Hiding?” he hazarded, not lowering his hands. “What are  _ you  _ doing?”

Allen blinked once before he admitted, “Following you.”

At that, he dropped his arms and rolled his eyes with a breath of an exasperated curse. “I’m already being followed,” he muttered, stepping to the crest of the roof and peering over into the marketplace. “What, you didn’t notice from up on your perch?” 

With a scowl, Allen followed his gaze across the bustling street, looking for anything remotely suspicious. He couldn’t see a thing.

“Blondie,” the hooded man murmured, “by the flower stall.” Allen caught him, mapped him. Long gold braid, severe eyes, a loose tunic belted over the skin-tight leggings of a bender, always dressed for freedom of movement. The national emblem was impressed into his bracers in gold, and Allen sank below the ridge of the roof with a carefully calm breath. 

Forcibly mild, he asked, “Why are you being followed by the National Guard?”

“If I knew,” he laughed mockingly, “I wouldn’t be running across rooftops. I’d be on the other side of the country.”

“Well,” Allen bit out, “don’t bring him  _ here.  _ The last thing I need is Earth Benders.”

The man shot him a teasing sort of look from beneath the shade of his hood. “Thought that’s what you said you  _ were  _ looking for.”

“A specific,” Allen gritted out under his breath, “Earth Bender.  _ Not  _ a member of the National Guard.”

“I suppose you’ll happily stop following me, then,” he reasoned simply, turning over his shoulder to peer back out at the marketplace.

_ “No,”  _ Allen insisted, hand snapping out to grip the man’s elbow too tightly. “I need to know you won’t tell anyone I’m here.”

“I give my word!” he shot off sarcastically. “Can we go our separate ways now? The last thing  _ I  _ need is to be caught withholding information on the Avatar.”

“Fine,” Allen huffed, lifting into a crouch and slinking down the back slope of the roof. “I’m going back the way we came.”

“What?” he demanded, rushing to catch Allen’s arm. “No, I’m going back the way we came.”

_ “Why?”  _ Allen hissed, shaking him off.

The man spread his hands like it was obvious. “The last thing he’ll expect is for me to double back.”

“I can’t be this close to that many people!” Allen insisted, exasperated. “They’ll spot me in an instant! Just like you did.”

“So find your own roofs to climb!” he reasoned, unbearably unreasonably, and lept lightly from one eaves to the next, almost buoyed by air. 

With a frustrated huff Allen scrambled after him, saying, “These  _ are  _ my roofs. I was here first.”

“I thought you said you  _ didn’t  _ want a run-in with the National Guard,” he gritted, swinging over the pitch of the next house and sliding his way down the tiles to jump to the next.

“I don’t,” Allen said, rushing to follow him. “But neither do you. Particularly not if I’m around.”

“What’s that supposed to mean,” he demanded, already cresting the next house.

“It  _ means,”  _ he huffed, “I’m going back the way I came,  _ and  _ acting as incentive for you to not get caught. So  _ get me out of here.” _

“Oh, no,” he laughed, fake and mocking, “I am  _ not  _ in cahoots with you.”

“Whether you like it or not,” Allen growled, hot on his heels, “we are in cahoots.”

“Okay, well. Have fun being the Avatar. I’m going this way,” he announced, swerving off sharply to run light as a feather along the peak of the roof they were on and take an impossible leap across the alley separating them from the next row of houses. 

He couldn’t  _ possibly  _ have made that jump, but the peak of his leap grew higher and longer as though the wind itself was carrying him over to land safely on the next rooftop and take off running in that same direction, leap after impossible leap lifting him streets over. 

_ “Wait!”  _ Allen tried to call, forgetting for a moment that he was meant to be hiding. “You’re an… Air,” he murmured, watching him go, “Nomad. God,” he breathed burying his face in his hands and shaking his head all over again. “Stupid,” he huffed, striking his fist against the hot tiles. Well. Omashu was a bust at that point, anyway. Agent or no agent, he had to get out. And there went the one man Allen could hope to find who would know how to reach the Air Temples. 

Another half-second of hesitation passed before Allen let loose a frustrated groan, swung down from the roof and took off running after that red hood all over again. 

The streets he crossed weren’t exactly crowded, but the leaps they’d been making from roof to roof were short ones, and the walkways between them were cramped and all too difficult to dash through. Tracking the Air Bender with glances up to the slivers of sky to catch sight of his red hood every time he lept, Allen struggled to gain on him, periodically calling out,  _ “Wait! Please!”  _ to only a brief glance and a look of infuriated frustration.

“Go  _ away,”  _ he demanded, keeping track of Allen through the gaps in the houses. “If you want to get caught that badly, just turn yourself in!”

“I’m trying,” Allen said between sharp breaths, “to ask you something!”

“Ask somebody else,” he snapped, veering away in a leap overhead the alleyway Allen was charging down.

Allen gritted his teeth in frustration and looked ahead, plotting to turn down the next street to keep on his tail, and almost fell over himself with how quickly he rushed to backpedal. The blond Guard from the marketplace stood at the mouth of the alley, sharp eyes cast on the rooftops beyond where the Air Bender had disappeared from Allen’s hemmed-in line of sight.  _ “Look out!”  _ he cried, hoped it would be loud enough for him to hear, and turned on his heels to dash back the way he came, caught the corner of the building to swing himself around and follow the street running parallel to the course he’d abandoned, and called again after the man on the rooftops, “I said  _ look out!” _

He cast Allen a wild gaze, frantically confused, and took all of one look over his other shoulder before five stones the size of Allen’s fists struck him from the roof and dropped him into the shard of space between two houses. 

With a short yell, Allen rushed to follow him. He made the entrance of the alley just as the Guard made the exit, and the moment he’d pushed himself to his knees, the Air Nomad lifted his fist and struck it to the earth, the intricate blue tattoos forming an arrow down his brow lit up in an unearthly glow. A concussive torrent of wind erupted from the alley, shunting Allen away with enough force to make him stumble. Frantic, he glanced around and jumped to catch the low eaves of the house the man had fallen from.

Swinging back up onto the rooftops, he side-stepped along the alley, torrential wind gusting out in every direction. Directly above where he remembered him falling, Allen tried to peer down only to find his eyes forced shut by the crass fury of the hurricane brewing below him, shoved a step back onto the roof. 

Drawing breath deep into his lungs, Allen shifted his feet into a low attack stance and drew flame from the air with the breath of his belly, driving it out into the windstorm only to be blown out like a candle. 

And suddenly, there was no wind at all. Not a breeze to lift his fringe. Scrambling to the edge of the rooftop, Allen peered down to watch just the Guard dropped the wall of stone he’d conjured as a windbreak onto the Air Bender’s back and drop him to the ground, rocks twisting and morphing into shackles which melded with the harsh pavement to lock him down.

From within his bracers a sharp, flat blade had dropped, fitted to lie flat against his forearm. He planted his knee to the Nomad’s back, curled a fist into his thick black hair, and lifted his head to level the blade to his throat. In a crisp voice, clear and calm and professional, he asked, “What did you do to him?”

“To  _ who?”  _ he spat, jerking his head in an effort to jostle the cold steel away from his throat.

“The Avatar,” the Guard answered simply, his hold as steady as stone. 

“I didn’t do anything to him,” he gritted and jerked his head again - sharper this time, eyes levelled in a determined glare up at Allen. “I was trying to get  _ away  _ from him.” Telling him to run while he could. How noble. 

“If you do not tell me everything you know,” he warned, inflectionless certainty the only colour in his voice, “I will be forced to kill you.”

“I don’t know  _ anything,”  _ he barked, jerking at stone bonds which only grew tighter. The tip of the blade pressed against the side of his neck, drawing a divot in his skin and pricking a drop of blood to dribble down his throat. 

“I’d suggest you stop struggling,” he murmured, “and tell me what I need to know.”

Another lungful of air pulled deep, Allen dropped from the eaves with a low kick swiped out at the Guard’s legs, a flare of too-hot fire whipping out to have him stumble back a step. Allen caught the weight of his breath in his hands, and forced it out in a sharp burst, a streaming ball of flame shot at the Guard’s chest shattering against the wall of stone he’d dragged from the side of the closest house as a shield. 

“Release him,” he commanded, breaths precise, and watched more than a little on edge as the Guard let his stone wall crumble. 

“Thought I told you to piss off,” The Nomad muttered from under his breath, fists curled against the pavement, the tattoo on his brow dim now, and bared by the way his hood had fallen back on his fall. 

“I’m not concerned with him,” the Guard said, stepping closer, his piercing eyes locked unshakably on Allen, heedless of the man he had pinned to the earth between them. “I’m concerned with you.”

Allen centered his breath, readied his flames, and the Earth King’s National Guard dipped his head in poised submission.

“Admiral Cross Marian’s pupil, I presume” he greeted with lifted chin and stern shoulders. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting, but as I approached by the canal I considered he was a threat.”

“Seriously?” the Air Nomad gritted against the ground.

“Who are you?” Allen demanded, brow furrowing in confusion. 

“Howard Link,” the Guard answered simply. “My employer is Cross Marian’s contact. He’s assigned me to protect and train you.”

Allen doubtfully eyed the emblem printed on Howard Link’s bracers and asked, “The Earth King is Cross’s contact?”

A small, thin smile flickered across his severe face before disappearing. “It would be unwise to offer names.”

“Considering I have nothing to do with any of this,” the Air Nomad growled, “would you mind letting me go?”

“I can’t allow that,” Link stated, somewhat cold. “You have the potential to expose and incriminate both the Avatar and myself. There is no sure way of ensuring your silence.”

_ “Hey!”  _ Allen called, stepping over the Nomad with a nervous laugh, lifting his hands in rushed placation, “hey, now, he’s fine. Right?” he asked, looking down at him and nodding emphatically. “You’re fine?”

“Yeah,” he agreed on a rush, nodding along, “yeah, I’m great, I’m perfect. I want to be involved in this even less than you all do. Why would I get authorities involved?”

“The reward for information on the Avatar is no small fee,” Link reasoned simply, refusing to back down from his cold suspicion. 

Allen blinked. “There’s a reward for me?”

“I was raised in a monastery,” he groaned, bitterly frustrated and tugging harder against his restraints, “and the only thing they taught me before I ran off is that money’s only worth anything if you win it.”

“Win it?” Link repeated, a confused frown creasing his brow.

“Like,” Allen hazarded slowly, “gambling? You’re a gambling monk?”

“Do I look like a monk to you?” he seethed, glaring up at Allen from the dirt. 

“Who  _ are  _ you?” Link demanded, taking a step closer.

“Tyki Mikk,” he grit out, shifting his glare to the Guard, who scoffed a short, stilted laugh. It was ugly and sharp, as though it had been wrenched out of him. He didn’t strike Allen as the type who laughed all that often. 

“Paid assassin,” he scoffed, “raised by monks.”

“I told you,” he tried to shrug, “money’s only worth something if you win it.”

“You’re an assassin?” Allen repeated, blinking down at him.

A sharp grin curled onto his face and he answered, “Only when I’m working.”

After a moment’s hesitation he asked, “Are you working now?”

Mikk scoffed a laugh, breath fanning away the dirt beneath his cheek. “If someone had paid me to kill you, you’d be dead.”

Imperious, Link asked, “You think you could kill the Avatar?”

“I could steal the air from his lungs with a flick of my finger,” he said. “Try fire bending with that.”

Allen crouched down by his head. “Could you teach me?” he asked, brows pinched in a determined frown. 

Mikk arched a brow. “How to kill people?”

“How to air bend,” Allen corrected, frown dripping into a scowl. 

He paused for a long moment, considering it, before admitting, “Probably.”

Allen looked up at Link and nodded, stood up and stepped back. “Let him up.”

He stood still, reluctance warring with Allen’s command. “I,” he started, stiff and uncertain, “can’t advise that.”

“You either imprison him and he talks,” Allen reasoned, “take him with us,” he listed, “or kill him here. And, Link,” he added, standing tall and pulling air deep into his lungs, flaring the heat of the air around him, “I’m afraid I won’t allow you to do that.”

Link held his stare for a long moment, his expression one of efficient calculation. Eventually, not releasing Allen from the severity of silent reprimand present in the set of his eyes and the pitch of his lips, he lifted a hand, fingers spread, and closed them steadily into a fist until the stone shackles at Mikk’s wrists and knees crumbled to sand. 

With a sharp gust of swirling wind, Mikk lifted lightly to his feet and swiped his thumb across his grazed cheek, his split lip, and smiled over at Link. A smirk - a sly challenge, sharp and taunting. “We should spar sometime, Howard,” he proposed, loosening his shoulders and rolling his neck. “I’d love to best you on even footing.”

Another sharp laugh tore from Link’s lips. “I’m sure you would,” he said, turning on his heel and striding out towards one of the streets hemming their alleyway in. 

Mockingly unamused, Mikk arched a brow at Link’s back and lifted a hand only to flick his fingers lightly as though waving something away. At the same moment, a sharp gust of wind tangled at Link’s ankles and caught him up until he tripped and stumbled, falling into a smooth roll when he was unable to right himself and twisted in a swirl of kicked-up dust to level his blade at Mikk, face hardened into an expression of infuriated impatience. 

Mikk only raised his hands in supplication, laughter falling past his lips as he stepped past and pulled the hood back over his head to hide what a thick head of hair could not, reasoning, “We’re even now, Howard, I swear.”

The look Link shot Allen was rightfully disapproving, but he too only spread his hands and slipped by. “Where else am I going to find an Air Bender who owes me a life debt?” he tried.

After a long moment of stubborn refusal, Link harshly sheathed his blade in his bracer and strode out after them, frustration making his steps long and his fists tight. “Neither of you have any idea where you’re going in here,” he muttered, brushing past both of them to lead them out of Omashu and on to wherever Cross had decreed they need to be. Somewhere nice, maybe.

“We need to go to the Fire Nation,” he announced, stern and inarguable. “Admiral Cross has demanded we free him before his trial.”

Allen’s lips pinched into a tight, unsurprised smile. “Of course he did.”


End file.
